Channeling Paula Abdul

No, I haven't gone crazy - think earlier days and her rather sad dance with a cartoon cat.

If you guessed "Two steps forward, three steps back" and then further guessed "Oh hey, another post wherein she whines about her PhD" then you win the prize! (Not sure what the prize is...maybe you get to stop reading and go back about your day?)

You remember the "oh hurry hurry" emails I got, right? So I hurried and turned it in. And then waited 3 weeks on the button to get any feedback. Ok, fine. I was working on step 2 in the meantime and since this was my prof's idea and I thought I knew what he wanted, I figured the feedback would be minimal.

Insert maniacal laughter here.

The feedback was the requisite "what the heck is this?" feedback that really, if I'd been thinking at all I would have simply expected.

It ranges from the ROL not aligning with the research questions (it does, but really the underlying issue is they don't like the research questions, even though they gave me those questions as examples of what they were hoping for me to study) to not having enough detail in the approach, even though I have more detail in this approach than I had in the previous idea paper that was, oh yeah, APPROVED.

If I hadn't paid my tuition yesterday (seriously, I finally gave in an enrolled yesterday) I would just chunk and say to hell with it. I still may, honestly, I think I have til the 14th to withdraw with full refund. Maybe the 23rd.

As I can't really remember why I'm subjecting myself to this anymore, that idea becomes more and more tempting.

I suspect I'd only feel like a miserable failure for 6 months or so thereafter. Really, that's not so huge a price to pay.